Giuliano Besson, 1970s Blue Avalanche downhill skier, died at 75

He died at the age of 75 from a sudden illness, Giuliano Besson, downhill skier of the Valanga Azzurra in the 1970s. Born in Sauze d’Oulx on New Year’s Day 1950, he took part in the 1972 Olympic Winter Games in Sapporo, which also counted as the World Championships and was his only Olympic presence, placing 11th in the downhill. Also that year, in the World Cup he got his first major result on March 15, when he was seventh in the downhill on the Saslong, and the next day he was tenth in the giant slalom.

On January 26, 1974 on the Streif in Kitzbuehel he captured his first and only World Cup podium: he placed second, 18 hundredths behind the ruler of those years, the Swiss Roland Collombin, incredibly ex-aequo with Stefano Anzi, with whom he would found the famous clothing brand AnziBesson. A few days later he was fifth at the World Championships in St. Moritz, his best result in a medal event, and then won the Italian title in the specialty.

His twelfth and last top 10 result in the World Cup, his eleventh in downhill, was ninth place in Wengen on Jan. 11, 1975.

Then, at the end of that season, he and Anzi were disbarred, as he put it, at the behest of technical director Mario Cotelli, because the two had dared to stand up as defenders of skiers’ rights: a shameful affair, to say the least.

Besson had again been at the center of controversy when, last year, he had created, alongside AnziBesson’s, which was now totally his since he had long since parted ways with his former partner, he had filed another trademark, “Valanga Azzurra,” without the consent of his former partners, who had harshly attacked him just as the docufilm of the same name was released.